


To Meet You Again

by Scarpath



Category: Sonic the Hedgehog - All Media Types
Genre: Kinda happy but also kinda sad, based on another fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2017-11-29
Packaged: 2019-02-08 07:14:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12859491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scarpath/pseuds/Scarpath
Summary: Shadow seeks out Delilah, and watches over her.





	To Meet You Again

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Bonfire](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12674544) by [Natizilda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Natizilda/pseuds/Natizilda). 



> I finally finished another fic. Took me long enough. This is just a one-shot, but at least it's something. It's based on Bonfire by Natizilda, and I suggest you read that before you read this, as this wont make any sense otherwise. This is my own sort of epilogue.
> 
> It kinda went way out of the original idea I had, but I think I'm satisfied with it anyways. (I don't know, the characters seem kinda OOC to me, but meh)

_ I’m just looking for her because I have nothing better to do.  _ At least, that’s what Shadow told himself as he sought out an obnoxious hare.  _ With no one around anymore to pester me, I might as well. _ Shadow pointedly ignored the fact that the hare was once one of the most annoying of those to pester him.

 

For a few years, he had haunted around where Eggman’s base had once stood. He asked around, trying to find a small family of hares. She was three when he finally located her.

 

He hung in the background, not wanting to mess up the happy future Delilah had worked so hard to make for herself. (And for him, but that was beside the point.) He watched from afar, just checking up on her every once in awhile.

 

Then, when she was six, in a somewhat ironic twist, he saw her getting bullied for her ears. Just as the first time he had met her, in another timeline. However, this time, he stepped up without prompting.

 

He loomed over the children, speaking in a dark tone. “Just what do you think you are doing, brats?”

 

The bullies stuttered at the sight of his well practiced glare, before running off. The hare, however, puffed up, indigent.

 

“I coulda handled that! You didn’t need to do anything!”

 

“I’m sure.” Shadow replied, turning and walking off without another word. Delilah was too stunned by his abrupt departure to stop him.

 

After that incident, nothing major happened for another year. Shadow returned to his routine, checking up on Delilah every so often. However, it seemed fate would play it’s course, no matter the changes to the distant past.

 

She was seven when her parents died in a car crash. Her father had been driving on an icy road when another car careened out of control. It had pushed the car her family had been off the road and into a half frozen lake. The car had punched through the ice, trapping the small family under the water. She was the only member of her family to make it out of that water alive.

 

Shadow cursed himself for not having been there to save her parents. Perhaps it wasn’t anything he could have helped, but he still blamed himself. He had only arrived 3 days after the incident. He found her in the hands of social workers instead of her family.

 

He knew he had to intervene in her life once again. He couldn’t leave her to the social workers, waiting to possibly never find a new family. He owed her more than that. The  _ world _ owed her more than that.

 

That didn’t mean he was excited for what he was going to do, however.

 

Even a good hundred years after he had managed to quit GUN, he still had enough influence to do pretty much whatever he wished. Only a day after he had put in the paperwork, Delilah was officially his adopted daughter. Ironically. Of course he would end up a father, despite his insistence otherwise.

 

As Shadow expected, Delilah bombarded him with a slew of questions when the adoption was finished.

 

“Why’d you adopt me? Who even are you? Wait, aren’t you that guy who chased off all of those mean kids a year ago?”

 

Shadow sighed at the girl. “I’m Shadow. And to answer your questions, yes, I was the one who chased off those bullies. I adopted you because I made a promise to... a friend.”

 

“Ohhh, a promise. Is that why you’ve been stalking me?”

 

“Yes.” Shadow responded, not bothering to elaborate. He hadn’t realized that she had spotted him, but it was of no matter.

 

“Come. It’s getting late.” He demanded, walking off. He didn’t have to look to make sure she was following, as her hyperactive questions drilled at him.

 

“Are we going to your house?” She asked, curious. She wondered what the house of a guy like him would look like.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Do you always have a frown on your face, or are you feeling a stomachache?”

 

The familiar words sent a pang through Shadow. They were exactly the same as what she had asked, in the bad timeline. His step faltered, and he shot a glance at Delilah.

 

“Alright, that’s enough questions. We’re here.” Shadow said, leading Delilah towards a nice looking house.

 

“Woooaaah. This place is awesome! You really live here?” The house was nothing like what she had imagined. She had pictured some ominous, dark looking place, to match the person that lived in it. But this house was... normal.

 

“What did you expect, Survivor?” The nickname slipped out of his mouth before he realized. However, perhaps it wasn’t as out of place as he first thought. Delilah still had that  _ look _ in her eyes, despite her better life in this timeline. The look of someone who would make it through anything.

 

“Survivor?” Delilah asked, confused at the name.

 

“Well, that’s what you are, isn’t it? You made it through that crash, despite all the odds. And it wasn’t just luck, was it?”

 

“I guess...” Delilah said quietly, looking down at the reminder of her recent trauma. Shadow felt bad at bringing it up, but couldn’t think of a way to comfort her.

 

“Get some sleep. We’ll need to figure out school for you in the morning.”

 

“Awww, but I’m not even tired!” Delilah whined, only to be caught in a yawn just a moment later.

 

“I’m sure.” Shadow responded wryly, “Come on. Your room will be the one straight down the hallway from the stairs.” 

 

He guided her up to what had been his room. He had pulled his personal effects out the previous day so she could have the only bed that was set up. A new one would be delivered in the next day or so, but until then he would sleep on the couch, if he actually needed to sleep. She tried to resist going to bed, but he eventually managed to get her to settle down.

 

In the morning Delilah was woken by the smell of breakfast. She tumbled down the stairs to find Shadow putting some eggs on a pair of plates. He turned to her as he placed the plates on the table, which already had glasses of milk and for some reason apples set out.

 

“Good morning, Survivor.” He said, motioning for her to sit.

 

“Good morning!” She chirped, sitting and diving into her portion. They ate in silence for a while.

 

Shadow spoke up eventually, “We need to discuss schooling for you.”

 

“Do we really?” Delilah whined, wanting anything but school.

 

“Yes, we do. I believe you are already a few years ahead of your peers, judging by what info I was given, but that is no excuse to slack on your learning. I would like to send you to the Prower schools.” Shadow replied, knowing that only a school designed by the late fox would be able to keep up with a girl who had managed to learn quantum physics and build a nuclear reactor by herself when still under the age of 16 in another timeline.

 

“Wait, the Prower schools?” Delilah asked, getting excited. “Those are like, the best schools around! You have to be reaaaaallly smart and stuff to get in! And have connections. Could you really get me in?”

 

Shadow snorted at her doubting tone. “Do you really not know who adopted you, Survivor?”

 

“Nooo??” She replied, making the single word into a question.

 

“I’m Shadow the Hedgehog, leader of the Peace Forces.” He said with a self satisfied smirk.

 

“Never heard of you.” The hare responded flatly.

 

“Hmpf. Well, suffice it to say, I can get you into the Prower schools.” Shadow responded with his own flat tone.

 

True to his word, Delilah was at her dream school just a few days(and a lot of paperwork on Shadow’s part) later. What she didn’t know was that her new ‘father’ had gotten on the case of the headmaster for making ‘connections’ even be needed to enter the school. The headmaster had listened, of course, as Shadow only helped keep the place running with large amounts of money so long as it met the standards Tails had set up a long time ago. The school was to be a safe place for any youth with higher than average intelligence to learn without being teased for it as Tails once was.

 

Delilah  _ loved _ the school. Yes, some-okay, most of the students were somewhat snobby, but they weren’t outright mean as a lot of the kids back at her old school had been. None of them even seemed upset that she was one of the most advanced kids there. The school even gave her her own workshop! 

 

She programed a robot that was fully responsive to almost everything she said to it in one year at the school. She called it Samson, much to her father’s amusement. By the time she graduated from the school, she had created many things, some of which even became known across the world!

 

She had been a little awed when she learned that her adoptive father was actually the leader of what many people called the ‘Hero Squad.’ He found people with cool abilities and a penchant of getting into trouble and trained them to help save the world from bad guys or crazy events. Of course, that was also about the same time she learned that her father was practically immortal. She had mixed feelings about that one, as realized that most the people he had grown close either already had, or would eventually die, leaving him just one bit more lonely.

 

And, she realized, her father was very lonely. She had changed that some, but she would still catch him with that far off look that seemed older than time. She hated when he got that look. He was her best friend, not just her father. And like any friend OR daughter, she hated to see him in pain.

 

She had found the Miles Electric Shadow had kept stored away a while ago. She never told him that she had. She had been shocked to find a video on there that was apparently left by herself, for herself. 

 

“Hey, me. Or whoever else is watching this. Well, if you're not me, I wouldn’t bother watching this, if I were you, as I’ll be talking to myself here. Well, a different version of myself.” Delilah had noted how... sad the her recording had seemed. Like she had lost something. “So yeah, you’re probably wondering why you don’t remember recording this. You see, I’m kinda hoping that this will even get back to me, and not erased when I change the past. Let me explain, because I have a feeling Shadow, the  _ porcupine _ , won’t.” The Delilah on the screen let out a large sigh.

 

“I met a time traveler when I was seven. He told me he was from the future, but it turns out he wasn’t. He was from two hundred years in the past! Something really bad had happened not long after he had traveled to his future, he just didn’t know at the time. I got him to agree to let me guide him to something he was looking for, ‘cause I knew he wouldn’t make it without my help.

 

“The thing he wanted was in some sort of lighthouse-ey building, I wasn’t really sure what it was. It turned out that it wasn’t a lighthouse at all, but a secret base for a bad guy that died years ago. It turned out that the bad guy had actually destroyed something really important, and messed up the world. A lot of people died because of it, and humanity became nomads again. Well, most of us. Some people were starting to settle down again, but they weren’t anywhere near as advanced as before.

 

“The time traveler I met hadn’t meant to go so far into the future, and his friends had actually been trying to find a way to get him back to his original time. We found a time traveling machine they had left behind, and he went back to the past.

 

“However, Shadow left his stuff behind here in the future! I figure he needs it to fix whatever happened, because my time hasn’t changed at all. I’ve been working really hard these past few years, and I’m almost ready to go back to the past. I’m taking this with me, so I figure that even if-no,  _ when _ I fix the future, this might still stick around. I’m leaving this message here so you might learn what happened, if the future changing means I forget everything.”

 

The video had cut off abruptly there. Delilah had been so stunned that she had nearly gotten caught by her father with the beat-up machinery in her paws. She wished her father had told her about this, but understood why he hadn’t.

 

So, she set on what would be her life’s work. At first, she was just trying to find a way to extend her own life, so her father wouldn’t be alone again, but she gave up on that pretty quick when she discovered that sort of thing would only change her in bad ways. Instead, she managed to get ahold of the two hundred and fifty year old records of her father’s creation that had somehow withstood the passing of time.

 

It took her a while, but finally she was able to present her father with her finished research. A not quite ‘Ultimate’ being, but one that would not age. The plans she showed her father would help make a creature similar to Shadow in many ways, but who would not have quite as many offensive capabilities, in respect to a conversation she had with her father before she had even started her work. A conversation in which he actually admitted to hating being not only the ultimate being, but also the ultimate weapon. She would not have her creation be as miserable as he was.

 

She showed her research to Shadow before she started on the project.

 

“If I can’t follow you through the ages, then I want to leave you with someone who can.” She had said. Shadow was reluctant to allow her to go forward with the project, but when she got very sick, to the point neither were sure she would survive, he finally broke to her pleads. 

 

“If it’ll make you happy, then go ahead with it.”

 

It had been hard for her to hold back tears when he had said that. After all, the great, stoick, Shadow to give in only to make her happy? It was almost too much. She just hoped that  _ he _ would be happy.

 

She started the project.


End file.
